“Your Grace, I fear I have caused offense where none was intended.”
Frances found her own voice only after a moment. “Good afternoon, Lady Ashford.”
The viscountess held her gaze for a beat too long. Then, she turned and left.
Andrew remained where he was until her footsteps had faded down the corridor. Only then did he move, crossing to the window and looking out as if to ensure she had truly gone. Frances watched him, unsettled by the line of his shoulders, by the hard set of his jaw, by the way his hand closed once into a fist before he released it.
“She was only asking questions,” Frances told him, though she did not quite believe it.
Andrew turned back to her.
“No,” he said. “She was not.”
The answer sent a chill through her. Frances looked toward the abandoned teacup on the table, the pale rim marked where Lady Ashford had drunk from it.
It was supposed to be a simple visit, a polite call and congratulations offered in a pretty voice. And yet, the room no longer felt safe.
She looked at him then, truly looked, and saw that whatever had frightened him had not begun with Lady Ashford’s visit. It had been there before, buried beneath his control, waiting for the proper question to expose it. And Frances, who had thought herself merely uneasy a moment before, felt the unease deepen into something colder, because Andrew had not reacted like a man protecting a rumor.
He had reacted like a man guarding a dangerous secret.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You know what she came here for,” Andrew heard Frances say.
He turned from the window slowly. The carriage had not yet rolled away from the front steps, but Lady Ashford was gone from the room, and still the air held the shape of her visit. Her questions lingered like perfume too sweet to be harmless.
Frances stood beside the abandoned tea tray, pale with anger and confusion.
“Do not tell me you do not know,” she demanded. “You understood everything the moment you entered.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened. “She was merely prying, as such women tend to do.”
“Yes, I had gathered that much for myself.”
He frowned. “Then there is nothing else to say.”
Frances stared at him. “Nothing else?”
“No.”
She gave a small, incredulous laugh. “How impressive. You have reduced intrusion, gossip, scandal, and a woman asking pointed questions about a child in our care to nothing else.”
“Ourcare,” he repeated before he could stop himself.
Her eyes sharpened. “Yes.Ourcare. Unless you have forgotten the marriage you insisted was necessary.”
He had not forgotten. God help him, he had not forgotten for a moment. How could he, when he saw her seated at the head of his table, when he passed a room and heard the low murmur of her voice, when the servants called her Her Grace and the words stirred something in him he had no right to feel?
But the child was different. The child was the line he could not allow her to cross.
Andrew drew himself straighter. “The matter remains as we agreed.”
Frances’ expression changed at once. “As we agreed?”
“You were told from the beginning. There are to be no questions about the child.”
“Yes, I was told,” she said, with each word clipped. “I did not agree to it.”
